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Smarty Pants

For students all round the country it is the dreaded exam period, and time seems to be slipping away at an ever increasing rate. With end of term deadlines looming and then exams within a matter of days the pressure is very quickly building up. But what can you do when the fear and panic gets too much and you find you’re bordering on a nervous breakdown?

The answer to this it seems for some students is to resort to drugs. But not just any drugs, these are ‘smart drugs’. And I’m not meaning ones like in the recent film Limitless, I’m referring to things such as Ritalin for ADHD and Modafinil for the treatment of Narcolepsy. It seems that a supply of Caffeine is just not enough anymore to keep up with students' pressing workload. The funny thing is that using these drugs doesn’t necessarily make you smarter, just more alert. So the quantity of revision may be there but the quality probably leaves a lot to be desired. One article I read featured an interview with someone who used Adderall throughout his University life and said that sure he was more awake but he find that he’d end up spending his time obsessing over one small part of an essay or topic so would neglect other areas of his study and end up with a clean and tidy bedroom. This is exactly what happened to my friend, he thought it would help and enable him to learn everything he could in the short amount of time he had. But did it work? Nope, and his room was no tidier either. He said he ended up obsessing over the most simple and obvious concepts in his revision and ignoring the detail he desperately needed to learn. He was also laughing a lot at not very funny things and was easily persuaded to come to the pub with us when he was meant to be revising.

So the moral of the story kids is ‘smart dugs’ don’t work all that well for revision, so don't believe the hype and stop procrastinating.

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